They became formally engaged and he returned to his old careless cheerfulness. He was no longer a pathetic object, and she was a little disappointed and yet ashamed of her disappointment. Why should she have vague "wants" in her nature—these luxuries of the pampered soul? The face she now gazed upon, figured in the little ivory frame, was of a man, not over-wise, a man who was occupied with the enjoyment of life, yet without sinister motives. During those brief six months of married life, he had leant upon her, delighted and yet amused at her sterner virtues; and yet this man, not strong, not wise, when the call of duty came, when that ancient call to manhood, the call to rise up and meet the enemy, when that call came, he went out not shrinking, but with all honourable eagerness and fearlessness to offer his life. And his life was taken.
So that he whom in life she had never looked to for moral help, had become to her—in death—something sacred and unapproachable. In her first fresh grief she had asked herself bitterly what she—in her young womanhood—had ever offered to humanity? Nothing at all comparable to his sacrifice! Had she ever offered anything at all? Had she not, from girlhood, taken all the joys that life put in her way, and taken them for granted?
She had been aware of an underworld of misery, suffering and vice, had seen glimpses of it, heard its sounds breaking in upon her serenity. She had, like the travelling Levite, observed, noted, and had gone about her own business. So with passionate self-reproach she had thrown herself into work among the neglected children of the poor, and had tried to still the clamour of her conscience and fill the emptiness of her heart.
And until now, that life had absorbed her and satisfied her—until now!
"I am not worthy to look upon your face," she murmured, and she closed the ivory case, letting it fall upon her lap. She hid her face in her hands. Oh, why had she during those six months of marriage patronised him in her thoughts? Why had she told him he was "irresponsible," jestingly calling him "her son," and now after his death, was she to add a further injustice and become unfaithful to his memory—the memory of her boy, who would never return?
Sharp, burning tears oozed up painfully between her eyelids. She tried to pray, and into her whole being came a profound silent sense of self-abasement, absorbing her as if it were a prayer.